


Snow

by captainhurricane



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2066076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the First War took away. Remus Lupin and the years of being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow

Remus had always hated snow. He hadn’t found joy in snowball fights or the way his breaths formed a white cloud, not even when he was still wee child, tiny as a fire extinguisher and no wolf-bite burning on his body. It had been a vague dislike then, just the sense that mom, no, I don’t wanna instead of pure screams of terror but it had unnerved him even then. Some of that dislike had slipped into hate when it- him- had happened, when he had struggled and cried for his mom and been too tiny for this, been too tiny for the large hands grabbing him and the teeth clamping down on his side. Look at the moon, boy, the beast had growled after it had shifted from wolf to man and had grinned. Little Remus had cried for mom and the snow that evening had been cold and gotten stuck on his windows.

It had been easier in Hogwarts, the other Marauders making up a greater family than his actual one, all of them firecrackers and doing justice to their House names. Still then Remus had rather locked himself up in the dormitory to read instead of participating in a snowball war, no matter how much Sirius or James had pestered him. He had sometimes watched out of the window as his friends had played around in the snow, both Sirius and James dark spots and Peter a fairer one, laughing as they had ended up rolling around in snow, all three trying to stick it down each other’s trousers and jackets. Remus had tried not to think of the cold and the howling inside his heart. He rather takes his silence inside where it’s always suitably warm, not there where it’s cold and dim and always so quiet.

He hated the winter moons the most, the upcoming full moon making his joints ache and now there had been the obligatory trip to the Shack through the courtyard and through the snow, Remus shivering and feeling sick. His friends being there had helped to a certain extent, the cold nose of Padfoot against his hand and the quiet majesty of Prongs right next to him, the eager chittering of Wormtail right next to his skin. The wolf didn’t care if it was winter or summer. The wolf only cared for the moon and the meat. Remus wonders how ever he survived through the childhood moons (the winter ones, especially, the cold making his teeth clatter and waking up from his blackouts shivering and not remembering that the wolf didn’t feel the cold, for it, it was nothing but a slight nuisance) without the other Marauders.

Graduating from Hogwarts shouldn’t have changed that, shouldn’t have brought on bitterness to Sirius’ mouth and made Peter’s shoulders look more slumped, made up a bubble around James and Lily and her hand on her pregnant stomach. It shouldn’t have. Remus craves for warmth even when it’s not winter and the snow isn’t silencing the world and he gets it, at first. He lives with Sirius in a tiny flat not far from James and Lily and Sirius is always eager for the physical touch, his limbs long and strong as they wrap Remus in a hug. It’s okay, it’s okay, says Sirius every time. His voice had always been kind. The winters turn hellish as doubt springs up, even as James and Lily’s little boy is born, blinking his large eyes into the world and having no idea of the future. No idea at all. The winters are hell and Remus draws up an armour around him, visits less, knows less of what goes behind Sirius’ dark eyes. Loneliness grips Remus’ heart soon enough, the warmth of Hogwarts nothing more than a memory steadily growing more distant. Remus wishes he could return. How ever did he stand in the full moons, let out the wolf with odd cheerfulness without his friends? I’m sorry, I can’t, says James when he asks for company. I’m sorry, I’m a little- busy, says Peter and avoids his gaze. Okay, says Sirius but he remains Padfoot through the entire ordeal so that Remus doesn’t see the longing stuck on his gaze.

Then it crashes down, little Harry a year and a month old and Sirius finds James and Lily as corpses, life drawn out of them with a flicker of a wand. Remus doesn’t see Sirius for years after that, finds himself curling into the corner of their half-empty flat and letting out tears he doesn’t have the heart to cry anymore. Sirius kills Peter in a moment of rage, for Peter had ragged to the one behind it all (the Dark Lord is a nightmare of all nightmares, something parents tell their children at night even as they keep their grips on their wands tight for this nightmare is a real one) and James and Lily had paid the price- but not little Harry. Not him.

Why can’t I take him in, Remus insists but he is denied. It needs to be a relative so that he won’t be found, so that he won’t be in danger. But the Dark Lord- Remus insists, breath stuck in his throat, his memories are snowflakes inside his mind, falling and melting and vanishing. No, he is told. What could a twenty-one years old werewolf do anyway, whisper the more meaner tongues. Remus hides himself from the world then, from the Muggles who don’t know anything, who go on with their lives and with their wars and don’t know how close to the greatest nightmare they came, from the Wizarding world who shuns his kind and dismisses them as mere monsters. This way Harry can be safe, Dumbledore tells him, not unkindly but with sadness inside that wise voice. Safety at the cost of a happy childhood, Remus tells him bitterly and leaves.

He visits James and Lily’s graves and leaves a bouquet of dandelions, wipes away the snow stuck on their names. Grief clutches him with snow-cold fingers. He thinks of little Harry, growing up alone and unloved with relatives who don’t care of him. Is it worth it, Remus thinks. I saw them, I heard them talking and they’re- they’re all wrong. Remus makes a promise to himself to not think about Sirius or Peter at all, of the mere possibility that Sirius with his dark eyes and long limbs could have done something so terrifying (but was the choice to have dark thoughts not within him from the beginning?) and that Peter, twitchy, quiet Peter with his rats and his soft jokes, could have been so easily swayed, could have been squashed under the Dark Lord’s thumb like he was nothing.

Remus spends days, weeks, even years going from place to place, occasionally finding himself starved and chaining himself up when the time comes and letting the wolf rip through the skin. The invincibility of youth is a fading thing, a joke that bursts apart once all stability is gone from life, he had found out in a way that no one should find out. They had truly thought they had had something, they had pressed their heads together so often at school and said always, always, always. Their laughter is stuck on the walls of Hogwarts, on the branches of the Whomping Willow, on the shimmering lines of the Marauder’s Map. But what of our souls. Remus tries his best to sleep through winters, only waking up to cold, cold and cold and it’s like he’s five again and he’s being bitten, the wolf-man man-wolf ripping through his clothes and skin and muscle.

Remus hates the snow. Remus hates the cold loneliness in his heart more.


End file.
